Word.ws English Dictionary

Wars of the Roses

Wars of the Roses proper noun: a civil war that lasted from 1455 to 1487, fought between the English houses of Lancaster and York and allies in France, Burgundy and Scotland.

wars of the roses: a civil war that lasted from 1455 to 1487, fought between the English houses of Lancaster and York...
Image: Sodacan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

the Wars of the Roses pl (plural only)

  1. (historical, plural, plural-only) A civil war that lasted from 1455 to 1487, fought between the English houses of Lancaster and York and allies in France, Burgundy and Scotland.
    • But his grandson Francis, a Yorkist friend of Richard III, backed the wrong side in the Wars of the Roses and was declared a traitor by Henry VII, who confiscated his estates.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 286

Forms of Wars of the Roses

alternative formWar of the Roses

Origin of Wars of the Roses

After the symbols of the two sides: the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York

Questions about Wars of the Roses

What does Wars of the Roses mean?
Wars of the Roses means a civil war that lasted from 1455 to 1487, fought between the English houses of Lancaster and York and allies in France, Burgundy and Scotland.
What part of speech is Wars of the Roses?
Wars of the Roses is a proper noun.

Words near Wars of the Roses in the dictionary

  1. wars of conquest
  2. wars of independence
  3. wars of liberation
  4. wars of nerves
  5. wars of secession
  6. Wars of the Roses
  7. wars of words
  8. wars to the knife
  9. Warsame
  10. Warsames
  11. Warsangeli

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Wars of the Roses (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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